Data stored on portable storage devices, such as, for example, Universal Serial Bus (USB) flash drives, or other portable storage devices, are inherently unprotected. If such a portable storage device becomes lost or stolen, the data stored thereon may be accessible by others.
One proposed solution for protecting data stored on a portable storage device, or other storage device, includes software-based encryption and access control. The proposed solution includes platform-specific software for a processing device, which limits portability of the portable storage device only to processing devices executing the platform-specific software. Further, software-based encryption, generally, is weaker than hardware-based encryption. Thus, security is degraded because the software-based encryption is incapable of protecting the data from an offline brute force decryption attack.
Existing hardware solutions for protecting data stored on a storage device are unable to provide simultaneous access to data having differing protection levels. Attempts to provide multiple protected storage areas in a storage device have had mixed success. For example, multiple protected storage areas in a single storage device may be mapped as multiple logical drives when using some operating systems, such as, for example, a Windows® based operating system (available from Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash.) in a processing device to which the portable storage device is connected, resulting in an undesirable user experience.